Although she was born into a wealthy and influential Chicago family and did not have to work, Frances Glessner Lee not only became the first female police captain in the U.S., she established the first department of legal medicine in the country, which we now know as forensic science.
“Everybody enjoys CSI and all these crime programs," said William Tyre, executive director and curator at Glessner House Museum in the South Loop, the home where Lee spent 10 years of her childhood. "Everything you’re looking at in those shows is all a result of the training she started back in the '30s and '40s."
As part of her training, Glessner Lee created tiny dioramas known as The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death. They helped revolutionize the way police conduct crime scene investigations.
“This was a male-dominated field," Tyre explained, "so part of what she had to overcome as well was getting the respect of the men who were already working in this field."
“I just hope that more people appreciate what Frances did. She was a pioneer, she really was,” said Dr. Janamarie Truesdell, forensic anthropologist at UW-Parkside College in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
The school loaned Glessner House a life-size recreation of one of The Nutshell Studies, which is now on display through Women’s History Month.
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